The numbers of environmental defenders being killed are going up. Picture credit: CC0 Public Domain
A report from conservation charity Global Witness has stated that 197 people were killed defending a land or environment in 2017.
Those who died were mostly park rangers, charity workers and infrastructure organisers – combatting poachers, miners, rebels and diseases.
The figures have quadrupled since 2002, highlighting how globalisation and a profit-driven worldwide economy has caused flare ups of violence in the third world. Global Witness took the numbers from a number of worldwide charities, like the International Rangers Federation and the Thin Green Line Foundation.
In Africa, the biggest threat came from poachers, where four rangers and a porter were killed last July. But there also remains a threat from the animals that the rangers spend their lives protecting. President of the Thin Green Line Foundation, Sean Willmore explains that in January “there was a ranger killed in Kenya who was mowed down by an elephant”.
In Africa, the biggest threat came from poachers, where four rangers and a porter were killed last July
In South America, Brazil and Colombia alone saw 78 deaths. Most of the violence there was put down to drug cartels and rebel groups like the FARC guerrillas, who seek to control land for use in agribusiness or the cocaine trade.
The Phillipines was the most dangerous country in Asia, with 41 deaths. Many were attributed to criminal and government violence as a result of Rodrigo Duterte’s policing strategy.
Sean Willmore believes that one of the key dangers to rangers and environmental defenders often goes unnoticed: loneliness. “You can have rangers who will see their families once in the whole year”, he says. This can lead to mental health issues and consequentially a lower quality of environmental protection and conservation.
Tom Bennett